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By Haruna Gimba
Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai of Kaduna state has presented a proposed 2017 budget of N215.9 billion before the Kaduna State House of Assembly.
The governor said beside the proposed 2017 budget, there was a three-year multi-year budget estimate, which also includes N218.6 billion for 2018 and N214.6 billion for 2019 fiscal years.
The proposed budget was made up of N85.5 billion, 40 per cent as recurrent expenditure and N130.3 billion, 60 per cent as capital expenditure.
Education gets the largest chunk of the budget with N48.9 billion, followed by works, housing and transport with N24.5 billion each, while health had N10.3 billion allocated to it.
Water resources has N8.1 billion, while rural and community development ministry was allocated N7.7 billion.
Agriculture and natural resources both had N4.5 billion allocated to each, while social development and commerce, industry and tourism both gets N2.2 billion and N1.6 billion respectively.
The economic sub-sector was allocated N37.7 billion, social sub-sector N56.6 billion and regional sub-sector N12.6 billion. General administration has N23.2 billion budgeted for it with the Executive arm being allocated N17.8 billion, law and justice N1.2 billion, legislature N458 million and governance N3.7 billion.
Presenting the budget proposal before the lawmakers at Lord Lugard House, Governor El-Rufai said it is a significantly larger budget size than the N189.9 billion the government initially considered.
“We presented the draft estimates for discussion through consultations with the private sector, civil society and, finally to the general public, at a town hall meeting.
“We reinforce our commitment to social justice by retaining high levels of spending on our social programmes. Social justice obliges us to sustain investments in education, health, infrastructure and social development,” Governor El-Rufai said.
According to him, the budget is opened to monitoring by the legislators and members of the public.
